The HIV2020 Conference has been reimagined as a series of virtual convenings that will take place June through October of this year.

HIV2020 Online will draw from the top-scoring, peer-reviewed program proposals we received from last year’s call for Expressions of Interest. In lieu of face-to-face meetings, these virtual sessions will include live-streamed keynote addresses from leaders in the field, panel presentations led by community advocates and community-led service providers, and virtual discussion rooms aligned with the HIV2020 themes of affinity, intersectionality, and solidarity. This ongoing virtual event will continue to reaffirm the leading role that communities play in the global response to HIV.

Given HIV2020’s focus on people living with HIV, gay and bisexual men, people who use drugs, sex workers, and transgender people, the virtual series will start in June with sessions aligned with the theme of affinity. Sessions will highlight the need to create space for civil society and showcase issues facing our communities. Although the event will no longer take place in Mexico City, many of our sessions will still highlight the priorities and needs of advocates in Latin America.

All virtual sessions offered as part of the HIV2020 Online series will be entirely FREE and made available as recordings online. Translation will also be available for all sessions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Russian.

Six months? A year? Longer? Never? How long until there’s a vaccine against COVID-19? How is COVID vaccine research moving so quickly? How do HIV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine research relate and inform each other? How do we ensure COVID research happens quickly and ethically?

As we approach HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD) on May 18, these questions are driving how we think about the ever-evolving global advocacy agenda.

On Wednesday, May 13, we conducted a webinar with Jon Cohen, one of the leading journalists covering both HIV and COVID. Jon is a Science staff writer, award-winning journalist and author of Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine. Jon discussed the rapidly growing pipeline of COVID vaccine candidates and shared insights on how the HIV vaccine field has laid the groundwork for this — along with how COVID research can contribute to the ongoing search for an HIV vaccine.

We also discussed some of the thornier issues emerging in COVID research: the WHO issued a report stating that well-designed “human challenge” studies could accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development. The report articulates important criteria for assessing a challenge study, but they left out the most important one: Until there is an approved treatment, a challenge trial with a potentially fatal and as-yet untreatable pathogen is unacceptable. See AVAC and TAG’s statement on the report here.

Recording and Slides: YouTube / Slides

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the research process. Sponsors, researchers, ethics committee members and other stakeholders are moving faster than ever to move effective products through the research pipeline. The pace of the research is also changing how stakeholder engagement is conducted. On Tuesday, June 9, speakers discussed the experience of conducting stakeholder engagement during the Ebola crisis in West Africa. They also explored some of the ethical challenges to conducting research in a public health emergency.

Watch the recording here.

This 10-week interactive and online course will help researchers and clinical trial stakeholder to apply the Good Participatory Practice (GPP) Guidelines in their unique settings. In this unprecedented time, sustaining effective partnerships is more crucial than ever before. This course provides a personalized learning experience, global knowledge, tools to advance GPP implementation in diverse contexts and access to GPP experts and professional networks. For more information, send an email to [email protected].

Enroll now at engage.avac.org.